One of the most efficient ways to get your business in front of your intended audience is through PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. PPC advertising is a powerful digital marketing tool that allows businesses to promote their products and services online while only paying when their ad is clicked. With PPC, you can create various types of ads—ranging from text ads that appear in search engine results, to video ads on platforms like YouTube. In this article, we’ll explore the fundamentals of PPC advertising, and how a marketing specialist can help you leverage this strategy to help grow your business.
What is PPC Advertising?
PPC advertising is a digital marketing strategy where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked on by a user. Because you only pay for the clicks you get on your ad, PPC can be a cost-effective way to drive traffic to your website or generate leads. A variety of formats can be used to create PPC ads, such as text ads in search engine results, display ads on websites, or video ads on platforms like Youtube. One of the biggest advantages of PPC advertising is its ability to target very specific audiences based on factors like demographics, location, keywords, and user behavior. This helps ensure that your ads reach the right people at the right time, increasing the likelihood of conversions—whether that’s signing up for a newsletter, completing a contact form, or making a phone call.
One of the most popular platforms for PPC advertising is Google Ads, where advertisers bid on keywords that are relevant to what they are advertising. When users search for these keywords, the ads are displayed in the search results, either at the top or bottom of the page. The cost-per-click on an ad depends on how much competition there is for a keyword, and the quality of the ad itself. Keywords that are very competitive will be much more expensive than keywords that are more niche.
How a Marketing Specialist Can Help
The world of PPC advertising can be intimidating and complicated, and it may seem tricky to determine what kinds of ads to create and where to place them. That’s where enlisting the help of a marketing specialist comes in. Let’s take a look at how a marketing specialist can help your business run a successful PPC campaign that reaches your target audience, drives traffic, and generates leads.
Keyword Research: During the initial stage of your Action Plan, the marketing specialist will conduct comprehensive keyword research. This process will identify specific, relevant keywords that align with your business, are likely to attract qualified leads, and are realistically competitive. Targeting irrelevant keywords can lead to wasting time and money, or bring in leads that don’t align with what your business offers. It is also important to ensure that the content on your site aligns with the keywords you have chosen, so users find what they were looking for after they have clicked on your ad.
Audience Research: Audience research is just as important as keyword research. Finding out who your ideal customer is and how to target them is a key step in this process. You don’t want to take a shot in the dark, and hope that your ads somehow find the right people. It’s critical to figure out where your audience spends their time online, where they are geographically, and what kinds of ads they will respond to. Do you only service a single area? If so, you will want to geo-target your ads to that location so you aren’t wasting money on clicks coming from an area that your business doesn’t serve.
Determining a Budget: A marketing specialist will be able to use tools and software to estimate how much it will cost per month to advertise for certain keywords. If you’ve chosen keywords that are very competitive, the cost-per-click is going to be much higher. For example, keywords like “running shoes” would be very expensive ads to run because so many companies sell running shoes, and the market is extremely saturated. Once you’ve determined how much you want to spend, a marketing specialist will calculate your average daily budget and your maximum monthly budget. If your campaigns are providing a good return on ad spend, you can always increase the amount you are spending per month.
Creating the Ads: Once the proper research has been completed and the budget has been determined, the marketing specialist can begin writing ad copy. Writing ad copy can be tricky, especially on platforms like Google Ads. A marketing specialist will write individual titles and descriptions, and Google will randomly create ads using these assets (titles, descriptions, images, and videos that are used to create your ads). This means that all the titles and descriptions need to make sense as standalone statements, and ads cannot be written as full paragraphs. Google will determine which combinations of assets are the most successful, and as the advertiser, you can choose to run these instead of others. Ad copy needs to be written for humans, not robots—it should be optimized, but optimized in a way that appeals to your target audience. You don’t want your ads to come across as being spam, especially in a B2B market. A marketing specialist will be able to help you determine which assets will work best for your target audience, and coordinate with a designer to create compelling visuals. Copyright infringement is serious, and all ads must follow legal guidelines, otherwise you can be punished as an advertiser.
Conversion Trackers: Once your ads have been set up, the marketing specialist will work with the web developer to embed conversion trackers into your website’s code. A tag is added to each action that you want to track, for example, newsletter sign-ups or contact form submissions. This will allow you and the specialist to see how many conversions you are getting from your ads.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Once you have conversion tracking set up, it is important that you continue to track those conversions down the pipeline. If you are a B2B company, customers probably aren’t purchasing things directly from your website. A conversion might be getting a new lead, but how do you know if those leads are actually turning into sales? Using CRM software will allow you to track the leads that come in from your ads, and what actually happens with those leads. If you never truly know your ROI, it is not as fruitful of a campaign as it could be. CRM software can also help you track leads and conversions that you receive through email marketing campaigns.
Data Analysis: One of the biggest advantages of using PPC campaigns as part of your marketing plan is the data that it produces. It is very easy to determine which ads are working, and which ones aren’t, giving you the ability to adjust your strategy in real time and not waste money. The marketing specialist will be able to provide you with regular reports about the demographics of the people clicking on your ads, the times your ads are being engaged with, the metrics of how many people are clicking, the number of conversions, return on ad spend, and much more.
Key Takeaways
PPC advertising can seem intimidating, but with the right expertise, tools, and research, you can ensure that your campaigns are set up to be as effective as possible. While PPC advertising offers a wealth of opportunities to drive traffic and generate leads, it does require careful planning, strategic execution, and ongoing management to truly maximize its potential. Hiring a marketing specialist can make all the difference, ensuring that your campaigns are expertly crafted and optimized to reach your target audience effectively. With their deep understanding of keyword research, audience targeting, budget management, ad creation, and data analysis, a marketing specialist can save you time and money while delivering measurable results. By entrusting your PPC campaigns to a professional, you can focus on running your business, confident that your advertising is in expert hands and working to achieve your goals.
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About the Author
McKell Michaelson is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Zykin Design dedicated to driving business growth, maximizing ROI, and increasing brand visibility through strategic and thorough online marketing campaigns.
